ChatGPT - The End of Writing?
Wednesday 14 December 2022
Have you heard about or checked out ChatGPT? You can find a link to it here. As my Dad likes to say, holy smokes!
According to Wikipedia, “ChatGPT is a prototype artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI which specializes in dialogue. The chatbot is a large language model fine-tuned with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.”
Some fellow teacher friends and I were discussing it recently, in relation to this Atlantic article titled “The End of High School English,” and I’m just stunned after playing around with it for an hour or so.
I started messing around using a Paper 2 question. After some fiddling around (some of my initial results came back at under 300 words), I plugged in this request: “Compare and contrast Shakespeare’s play Macbeth to Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis answering this question: what techniques have writers used to stimulate an emotional response in the reader? Write 1000 words.”
Of course, you can choose to put in any Paper 2 question and you can make the prompt as detailed, or not, as you need or want. It takes a bit of play and experimentation, but ultimately what gets produced is jaw-dropping.
I don’t think ChatGPT would get a 7 on an IB Paper 2 exam, but the responses could easily be in the 5 range. Let’s think about that for a moment: A chatbot can most likely pass the IB Paper 2 English Language A exam.
I was hoping to include the essay responses, along with tweaks to what I inputted to make the responses more sophisticated, but the system has been so overwhelmed and jammed up that it couldn’t spit out more than 400 words for me at any given time and I kept getting an error response. And yet, those 300-400 words weren’t bad. Consider this paragraph:
“Another technique used by Shakespeare to stimulate emotion is the use of character development. Throughout the play, Macbeth undergoes a transformation from a brave and honorable warrior to a ruthless and power-hungry tyrant. This change in character is depicted through the use of soliloquies, in which Macbeth reveals his innermost thoughts and feelings, and through the actions and dialogue of other characters. For example, in Act 1 Scene 7, Lady Macbeth says to her husband, "Yet do I fear thy nature; / It is too full o' the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way." This reveals Lady Macbeth's concerns about her husband's potential to be compassionate and kind, which is a trait that she believes will get in the way of their plans to take over the throne. As the play progresses, the reader witnesses Macbeth's descent into madness and his eventual downfall, which a sense of pity and empathy for him.”
It's not excellent writing, but the language is fluid. It discusses the author’s choices (how well is debatable) and the response shows knowledge of the play. There are just so many questions swirling around in my head. I’ve tried to organize them, but they are a mess because my thinking is a mess right now.
Some Practical Questions
What does this all mean for our day-to-day teaching?
What does this mean for the teaching of writing more generally?
Does this mean I can only conduct in-class and timed assessments?
What does this mean for the Higher Level Essay? It’s a processed essay!
Can the Individual Oral be “gamed” too?
Some Larger Education Questions
What does this mean for the teaching of writing more generally? Okay, I’ve repeated this question, but it’s worth asking again. How does this change how I teach writing, if at all?
What does this mean for larger school policies around cheating? Most IB courses have a strong written component to them. Lab reports? Economics commentaries?
How will education change now that a chatbot can do all of our writing for us?
How does this change teaching and learning in the classroom?
Will the IB change their assessments in the future because of ChatGPT?
Some Larger Society Questions
Is any writing authentic anymore? Was it ever? How has this changed the discussion around authenticity and originality?
Will “thinking” change? If we no longer have to write for ourselves, as a chatbot can do it for us, does that mean how we think and process information will change?
Is this the same as the invention of the printing press in terms of how it changed society? Will historians look back and see this as a major turning point/invention or just a blip in our technological advancement?
Is this the beginning of the end? Okay, I read too many dystopian and science fiction novels.
I have no answers to any of these questions. I will probably have no answers to any of the questions you pose in the future about this. But I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment, question, aside or thought below.
Best,
Tim